A Question of Ownership
by vespertine dreams
Summary: When an anomaly opens in Cardiff, the ARC team find themselves dealing with Torchwood. Mild slash- Connor / Becker. Reviews welcome.


A Question Of Ownership

This was odd, Connor thought, checking the anomaly detector. According to the detector, the anomaly should be right here, except it wasn't. After the speed-limit-breaking trip to Cardiff, and the worry about the chaos whatever creature had come through the anomaly could cause before they got there, it was beyond annoying when they couldn't find the damn thing.

"Where is it?" Abby demanded.

Connor glared. "How the hell should I know?"

There was a shout from one of the soldiers who had accompanied them and Becker told them to follow him.

"There's an underground parking garage," he said. "The anomaly is in there."

Abby and Connor hurried after him.

--------

"That's disgusting," Connor said, scrunching his nose up as he looked down at the half-eaten animal on the floor of the garage. He glanced around uneasily as he heard a sound in the far corner of the garage. "Anyone else think it might be a good idea to get out of here before whatever started eating that comes back?"

Becker nodded, thinking exactly the same thing. He turned to tell his men to do a quick search of the area, since they still had to locate the anomaly. It was only when he looked back at Abby that he realised something was wrong, following her line of sight.

Abby's eyes widened as she stared at something over Connor's left shoulder and she started to back away slowly. Becker raised his gun, also taking slow steps backwards. He didn't know how Connor managed it; he was like a magnet for trouble. If it had big teeth and looked hungry, it usually headed straight for Connor. It was why he usually made sure that they got teamed up together, the knowledge that the young man would need bailing out at some point from whatever mess he managed to get himself into this time. Or maybe he just noticed when Connor was in danger more than the others, Becker had wondered from time to time. He did his job, making sure the others were OK, but it was different when you were involved with someone. His protective instinct over Connor was stronger since they'd started dating.

"Connor, come over here," he whispered.

Connor swallowed hard, knowing that it was a stupid thing to do but unable to resist looking behind him. The whimper escaped his lips before he had the chance to stop it.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…"

Staring back at him from the roof of the black four-by-four nearby was a pterodactyl. A bloody huge pterodactyl, and it was watching him with an intelligent curiosity that made him want to run and hide behind Becker.

If only he could get his feet to move.

He saw the other soldiers fan out behind Abby and Becker, guns raised.

"No! I won't let you kill it," Abby told them. "Use the dart guns."

Gee, thanks, Abbs, he thought, a tiny bit offended. The thing was about to make a meal of him and she was worried about hurting it.

At Becker's nod, the men swung the guns around to their backs on the shoulder straps and un-holstered the tranquiliser dart guns instead. None of them looked particularly happy about it but they knew how to follow orders. Becker edged forward and grabbed Connor's hand, dragging him out of firing range as the sound of weapons being cocked filled the silent garage.

They were almost ready to fire when two men came running into the garage from a door at the back, guns of their own in their hands.

"Get out of the way!" Becker yelled, as his men took aim.

The men didn't stop, approaching with their weapons trained on Becker's men, placing themselves between the guns and the pterodactyl.

"Sir, we don't have a clear shot," Becker's second in command informed him.

The pterodactyl roused then, uttering a high-pitched screech as it flapped its wings.

"Move!"

The taller of the two men shook his head. "I think you'll find that she," he said, indicating to the creature, "belongs to us."

The other man, a young man in a suit and tie took something from his pocket and tossed it to the pterodactyl. It caught it in its beak and swallowed it, calming down.

"She's stressed; we need to get her back to the Hub," he told the man in the long army coat.

Becker watched this exchange with an irritated expression. "Look, whoever you are-"

"Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood," the man in the army coat informed him in heavily accented American tones.

"Fine, _Captain_," Becker continued, not looking impressed by the title. "The creature needs to be contained and returned where it came from. Please let my men do their jobs."

"Well then, your job is done," the Captain said. "We'll take her home. Who are you people anyway?"

"Captain Becker, head of security for ARC. This is Connor Temple and Abby Maitland."

Captain Jack indicated to the man standing next to him, still tossing food to the pterodactyl.

"This is Ianto Jones."

Connor shifted impatiently. "Good, everyone's friends now, but I need to get to the anomaly and close it before anything else comes through." He looked at the two men. "It must be around here somewhere; it looks like a piece of glass that's shattered, only in the air. Kind of shimmery, as well."

The Captain frowned. "So that's what that thing is. I thought it was a new breech in the rift. It appeared about six hours ago; a creature came scampering through and we were chasing it but then Gwen called to tell us that Myfanwy had escaped. Looks as though she caught the critter before we did," he said, eyeing the half-eaten creature on the ground nearby.

"What's a rift?" Connor asked.

He shook his head. "Never mind. You say you can close that anomaly thing?" When Connor nodded, he smiled. "Let's go then."

Becker signalled to his men to remain here with the creature and Abby, since she insisted on staying with it, and headed after Connor and the Captain.

--------

Abby watched as the pterodactyl snatched another piece of whatever the man was feeding it. He was speaking to it in a low voice, his lilting welsh accent almost hypnotic.

"What is that?" she asked.

The man turned. "Chocolate. She'll do anything for chocolate, won't you Myfanwy?" Seeing Abby frown, he added, "That's her name."

Behind Abby, one of the soldiers had called Lester back at the ARC. When he was finished, he closed his mobile phone with a snap.

"He said, and I quote, 'if they actually want a prehistoric creature flying around their building then let them keep the damn thing'."

The Welshman rolled his eyes as though to say that he was keeping her whatever the answer had been.

"I need to get her back to the Hub," he said. "If you could give me a hand?"

Abby grinned; she actually got to help move a real pterodactyl. It wasn't as though she didn't see long-extinct and wondrous animals every day at the ARC but this was something she had never come across. Especially not a semi-tame one.

"What do you want me to do?"

Under Ianto's direction, they managed to tempt the pterodactyl through the corridors and back to the Hub. Ianto was laying a trail of chocolate pieces to encourage her as Abby made sure she didn't turn back. The creature didn't seem to want to turn away, content to follow Ianto, and Abby couldn't blame her. Between the chocolate and the way his backside looked from where she was standing, Abby would probably have followed Ianto anywhere he wanted to lead her as well.

--------

Connor stood in the centre of the Hub with Abby and looked up, watching as the pterodactyl flew in a swooping circle around the roof. Eventually, it landed in the rafters and settled, shuffling its wings around itself.

"And it really lives here?" he asked.

The Captain came to stand beside them. "Yes. She came through the rift a few years ago and we kind of adopted her." He smiled at Connor. "So, you work at the ARC?"

"You sound surprised," Connor said suspiciously.

"No, just wondering if I could find an excuse to visit," he said, his eyes taking in every inch of Connor as he looked him up and down, then turned to Abby and did the same. "So tell me, is it company policy that everyone has to be hot to work there?"

Abby laughed. "Oh, you're good. However, Ianto and I had a nice chat before and I know that you're already spoken for."

"Damn!" He snapped his fingers in defeat but the grin never left his face. "Oh well, can't blame a guy for trying."

Jack turned to Connor again and found the young man trying not to laugh. "What? Come on, you've got agree that she's cute."

Connor shook his head. "You should see her when she's just woken up. She's a nightmare before she's had her coffee."

"So you two live together?"

"Yes." Connor's brows shot up as he back-peddled quickly. "Not like that! I'm her flatmate. That's all; nothing else."

Jack looked him over again. "I was kidding," he said, wondering what he'd said to offend. He caught Becker watching them out of his eyes corner, his expression making it clear that Connor was his, and the kid's reaction suddenly made sense.

-------

Jack had brought them to a bar he knew near to the Hub, offering them a place to stay for the night before they had to drive back home. As he led them to a booth at the back of the room, he paused to talk to everyone he passed. He seemed to know everyone, Connor thought. The man had shown them around the Hub, eager to find out more about the anomalies, an information exchange with Connor's curiosity about the rift that the Torchwood building sat upon.

"You know, we could discuss this over dinner," he'd said at the time.

Connor laughed. The man was incorrigible. Not that Connor was offended, in fact he was flattered. Jack was a handsome man and in other circumstances, he would have taken the Captain up on his offer. He glanced across at Becker and smiled; he and Becker had been a couple for nearly six months now, long enough for neither of them to be even slightly worried by Jack's flirting. He noticed that Ianto didn't seem bothered either, the other man simply rolling his eyes as though he was used to it.

They had met Gwen Cooper as well, another member of the Torchwood team who had come to the bar with them. She and Abby seemed to have found a common interest as they had been chatting at the bar for the past half hour.

A few drinks later and everyone was getting along like old friends.

"I have to say that I'm feeling a little left out," Becker commented as Jack's gaze roamed to Abby once more. Connor smiled; the soldier sounded a little tipsy, having had a couple of drinks once he was no longer on duty.

"Why?"

"Well, first Abby, then Connor… Never looked twice at me."

Jack grinned. "Oh, I looked, but you were armed. I make it a rule never to surprise a guy with a bigger gun than mine," he said before adding, "In the literal sense, of course."

"I wouldn't be too sure of yourself, if I were you," Connor told him, his cheeks heating up as he realised that he'd just said that out loud.

Jack's eyes shone with undisguised interest. "That a proposition?"

Connor glanced at Becker, seeing the smile on his boyfriend's face, matching the one Ianto wore.

"Maybe."

--------

Across the bar, Abby happened to look back to the table and saw that it was now empty. She and Gwen had been chatting, and then these three- rather tasty, in her opinion- blokes had started buying them drinks. She hadn't noticed when the Connor and the others had gone, feeling a little offended that they had just left her here without bothering to tell her they were going.

"Don't worry about them," Gwen told her. "If I know Jack, they'll all reappear tomorrow morning. He'll have charmed his way into bed…" She laughed. "He could charm the knickers off a nun, that man. You can stay with me. Rhys is out of town so we can have a girls' night in."

--------

Gwen had been right. The following morning, Jack, Ianto, Connor and Becker all reappeared in time to leave, Connor apologising for ditching her.

Looking at them all, noticing how tired they all looked, she smiled.

"You're forgiven. I may be a bit jealous, but I'm not cross with you."

End.


End file.
